Reading this list of tropes, one might be tempted to think of fanfic as just another form of genre fiction. Romance novels with proportionally more queer people, maybe. In this formulation, works of fanfic are discrete works of art, easy to separate from their context, massage a little, and release into the world as Fifty Shades of Grey or After.

But this idea doesn’t tell the whole story. Canon-divergent alternate universes (#2 most-liked). Fix-it fic (#12). Missing scenes (#14). Minor character focus (#32). Point of view shift (#34). What do these have in common? They all fall in the top quarter of most-liked tropes and themes—and all of them are absolutely intertextual, requiring the reader to understand the original story before they can fully appreciate the fanfic. And even when fanfic doesn’t demand a knowledge of canon to be appreciated, it can be intertextual with other works of fanfic (as pointed out by the Fanlore entry for fix-it fic).

It would be easy to say that “works like this will never break out of the fanfiction community and be seen by larger audiences,” because they can’t easily be subsumed into the for-profit world of professional fiction: they’re too connected to the fanfiction community and to the copyrighted works on which they’re based. But that’s not true, either. These stories can be widely appreciated. Think about Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, a fanfic so famous that it was reviewed in the Washington Post and its author was profiled in VICE magazine. For all its problems (and it has many, and we won’t enumerate them here—that’s another article) it’s a perfect example of a story that lives and dies on its intertextuality, not on its ability to have its serial numbers rubbed off and to be transformed into a middling work of YA romance.

So, when we ship, we are primed to read romance; on top of that, shippers are primed to hunt for romance in the everydayness of casual interaction rather than the grandness of declared love, since showrunners and writers conventionally withhold the catharsis of the BIG DAMN KISS but hook us throughout their stories with throwaways, asides, and hints (see: queerbaiting for when this is done dishonestly).

Which means we say (and in fact we are used to saying), “OK, they haven’t said anything explicit about their romantic relationship, but look at these twelve ways Scott has said he loves Tessa without saying ‘I love you’, because love is real.”

And so Tessa and Scott tremble on the outside edge of resolution. For all intents and purposes, their grand story – the return to Olympic skating; retiring with a gold model – has ended. But narratively, if we have read their story through the lens of shipping, we want the romantic resolution as well – which is why so many of us were kind of cry-hoping that they would kiss on the podium.

... My kink is Childhood Friends Turned Lovers, Everyone Can See It Except You, Old Married Couple, Best Friends, Absolute Trust In The Face of Death, Might Set Cities On Fire For Each Other, and Incredibly Intense But Makes Each Other Laugh. I’m guessing yours is too. Actually, research says that it is: Friends-To-Lovers and Slow Burn are listed as some of fandom’s favourite tropes.

Ok so am I the only one that gets turned on when kirk displays how he could actually run his entire ship single-handedly if he wanted to? These are only a few screenshots I’ve gathered, but he knows his science station, communications, the helm and navigation, and helped scotty get an entirely broken starship on the move from down in engineering. He’s the best captain in the fleet because he knows exactly how you should be performing your job (from first-hand experience) and can direct you or even step in if need be. He’s so damn intelligent, and I think that needs more recognition.